Farm406

IndHemp New Commodities Call for a New Business: IndHemp By Suzanne Waring farm406 18 Female plant mid-season. Courtesy of Morgan Elliott A griculture is a changin'. And with change are new businesses that join farmers in the production link to consumers. A new business in Montana is IndHemp located in Fort Benton. Owned by Ken and Julie Ellio; his daughter, Morgan Ellio; and Mike Herrmann, IndHemp came to Fort Benton in July 2019 to process hemp grain. e owners have brought together their expertise in different fields to run this new business. Ken Ellio has a master's degree in geology and has done brown field development. An old oil refinery in Wolf Point brought him to Montana in 2011. He later became involved with hemp in 2014 when he looked at hemp to be used for phytoroemediation of the contaminated soil. He received the first license in Montana to grow hemp and subsequently worked with Northeast Montana farmers who wanted to add hemp for crop diversity. Morgan Ellio earned a BS in chemical engineering and then worked for six years at Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM), familiarizing herself with processing and project engineering for agriculture and food industries. Hermann, who works from Colorado, also has a background in environmental and field work and had been affiliated with Ken previously. Last year was a scramble for the owners because they wanted to find the right location for the business. Aer seriously looking at sites in Glasgow and Havre, they found an empty shop with seventeen acres in Fort Benton. At last, they knew they had found the site for their business. Since then they have been busy making the property into a hemp processing plant. ey needed to add scales, grain bins, processing equipment and storage buildings. IndHemp first obtained their state-backed commodities license for industrial hemp with the Montana Department of Agriculture early in 2019. ey were then able to contract with farmers, winding up with close to twenty farmers under contract for almost 3,000 acres of grain. e company obtained a seed dealer's license for selling hemp seed and worked with a North Dakota company to supply certified hemp oilseed varieties. When farmers contract with IndHemp, they plant a variety of hemp that contains both male and female plants. Once the males pollinate the females, they naturally die off and become dead sticks standing in the field. e numerous female plants continue to grow and put on seed. Like wheat, the seed is harvested with a combine. "e grain is stored at the farm and then brought to us for cold press extraction," Morgan said. "We have about one month's production capacity. We will never operate like an elevator." e company started processing hemp in February 2020 and have from a fourth to a

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